


une fille comme les autres

by Itabane



Series: where once I was made of bone, now water, now nothing [2]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Badass Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Chinese Language, Chronic Pain, F/M, Gen, Identity Reveal, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Ladybug and Chat Noir have a bit of a different relationship than in canon, Lila Rossi Lies, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug Speaks Cantonese, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug Speaks Chinese, Marinette has a bit more of an excuse for acting creepily with Adrien, Marinette was grown in a lab for superhuman people, POV Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Past Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Relationship, being that she uh. hasn't had the most normal upbringing, by which I mean they actually hang out and are friends and respect each others' space and privacy, not between Marinette and her family they're good parents, she's understandably traumatized by this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-17 22:41:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29107986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Itabane/pseuds/Itabane
Summary: Marinette twists her features into a smile she's long since perfected, a one-to-one copy of her mother's. "I'm Marinette Dupain-Cheng. I'm just a normal girl, with a normal life." She says, French accent perfect. The girl in the mirror, freckled skin, dark blue hair and bright blue eyes on an otherwise average-looking Asian face, looks -or: Marinette Dupain-Cheng's past and present collide in very unpleasant ways.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug & Original Character(s)
Series: where once I was made of bone, now water, now nothing [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2134578
Comments: 5
Kudos: 43





	une fille comme les autres

**Author's Note:**

> This is the 'main story' of an AU I've been working on for a couple of months now, wherein Marinette isn't actually born in Paris, and instead is a human experiment gone rogue. It should be done in around three chapters, plus a bunch of other one-shots about past and future events. If you have any ideas or things you'd like me to write into this, please let me know ^^
> 
> This entire universe is loosely inspired by [Designation: Miracle by umisabaku](https://archiveofourown.org/series/376820), which is one of the best alternate universes I've ever read. If you're a fan of Kuroko no Basuke, Haikyuu or even just curious about what that's about, I highly recommend you read that series! I, who hadn't watched either of those shows and had no intention ever to, have reread all of these stories multiple times, because they're amazing pieces of art. (And for anyone who HAS read the series, yes I looked at Marinette's blue hair and eyes and her acrobatics and went, _hm, that sounds like the Blue Fives_.)
> 
> Warning, this is very self-indulgent, by which I mean: I've included things I like (the Chinese languages and dialects, a badass Marinette, freindship, etc.) Also, I speak only a little Chinese, and zero French. If I make a mistake or my translations are off, please do correct me!

Marinette Dupain-Cheng checks her reflection in the mirror with pursed lips and an unsatisfied slant to her brows. A white cheongsam blouse under a gray jacket, a pair of pink jeans fashionably cuffed at the bottoms, a small bag she'd designed herself - it's an outfit that screams 'collège student', the impression of a youngster just beginning to mature driven home by the two low pigtails she ties her hair in with bright red hairbands. If it has the added bonus of concealing her more-muscular-than-average build, well, that just means she's done her job right designing these clothes.

Marinette twists her features into a smile she's long since perfected, a one-to-one copy of her mother's. "I'm Marinette Dupain-Cheng. I'm just a normal girl, with a normal life." She says, French accent perfect. The girl in the mirror, freckled skin, dark blue hair and bright blue eyes on an otherwise average-looking Asian face, looks -

"Marinette!" Papa bellows from the kitchen and she only just manages not to jump out of her skin, hand reflexively reaching out for a weapon. "You're going to be late!"

Marinette presses her lips together to stop some very unflattering phrases from coming out. Tikki pats her thigh comfortingly through her hiding place in her bag, and Marinette whispers out a grateful, "Thank you, cungzai3," for the afforded kindness.

She does not want to be late, so she opens the trapdoor - just barely remembering to grab her school-bag as well - and ignores the stairs completely, instead jumping down into the living room. Her landing is silent, but her running steps to kiss her Papa goodbye and hug her mother are loud and clear.

"Papa, Nyung, dsaw zung haw, dsay way!1" 

""Take care!"" Her parents chorus behind her. Yes, Marinette thinks happily, today will be a good day.

* * *

Today will _not_ be a good day. Firstly, Marinette trips into class like always because her legs refuse to listen to her even more today and barely avoids slamming her head against the very sharp edge of Nino's desk. Then she is so paralysed by seeing Adrien before she could prepare herself and pull herself together that she forgets which language she's supposed to speak and babbles something incomprehensible in Cantonese that he, thank the Heavens, doesn't hear, and then it turns out she'd studied the wrong physics chapter for the day and M. Mendeleev is the furthest thing from amused.

Then, Lila pretends her arthritis is acting up yet again, and Marinette has to watch as poor Mylené has to take notes for her the whole class, and Ivan has to carry her books and bag around, and Alya throws a dissapointed look at Marinette for not being sympathic of Lila's numerous ailments when she snorts at her horrible acting, and _then_ , as if this day hasn't been extremely fun already, an Akuma shows up during lunch, before Marinette has taken a bite of the Shengjian Mantou her mother had packed for her for today. So, needless to say, when Ladybug comes onto the scene with a grumbling stomach and aching legs, she's not really in the best of moods.

Chat Noir notices, of course, but he refrains from saying anything no matter how much he looks like he wants to - they'd had a conversation in the beginning of their partnership, in which Ladybug outlined how and why they'd better behave when in the middle of fighting an Akuma. Marinette had been reluctant to move their relationship out of the strictly professional bounds, because the quickest way to get yourself killed during a mission is to forget you're on one, but Chat Noir grows on people like he's mold and she'd been unable to refuse those huge kitty eyes. They remain professional and concentrated when fighting Akumas, and in exchange they've set up patrols where Chat Noir can be as loud and obnoxious as possible, and Ladybug can wind down and actually stretch her legs a little bit.

The akuma, decked in an astronomer's suit in orange and purple with the very creative name of GastroNamer, and whose very big cornucopia shoots food at people at very high speeds, is mercifully easy to defeat - someone from school who didn't manage to get their favourite food to eat in the cafeteria. Ladybug would be more sympathetic to their plight if they didn't make her miss _her_ lunch, but the kid is genuinely sorry after they get deakumatized, and she doesn't make a habit of judging what people do when under Hawkmoth's influence, as she's quick to tell them. The cafeteria is in disarray, food splattered across the walls and ceiling, a whole chicken stuck on someone's head, but the students thankfully quiet down when they see her standing there with a reassuring smile - and Chat Noir, even more thankfully, stops smelling of Sursströmming canned fish once she Lucky-Charms the damage away.

"Ugh," her partner drapes himself dramatically over a newly-restored table, "I will never _touch_ fish again in my life!"

"What kind of cat are you then," Ladybug says jokingly, because they're in public and making a dig about Camembert cheese isn't really the most appropriate thing in the moment. Just as well; Chat Noir will get it double when they meet up later.

By the amused glance he shoots her, he's aware of that danger and is looking forward to it.

* * *

Marinette eats her Shengjian Mantou in relative peace until Adrien notices her snacking and asks, in the restrained but excited way he gets whenever something truly grabs his attention,

"Hey, what kind of baozi is that? It doesn't smell like the ones I've seen sold at Quartier Asiatique." Then, probably realising commenting on the smell of food isn't what his polite, professional model self should do, his ears and neck flush a pinkish red that is very obvious on his fair skin.

Marinette, taken off-guard by his presence for the second time that day, somehow manages to figure out how to speak good French again, because she stutters out a mostly coherent, "It's S-Shengjian Mantou, it's got pork in it! It - we fry it, also. After."

Adrien tilts his head to one side like a curious cat, "Mantou? Not baozi?2"

Marinette forces herself to breathe slowly. She _needs_ to act normal, fast; she promised herself and Chat Noir both. At least talking about food without stuttering too badly is something she can do. "It's - mantou is both filled and unfilled buns, here." _Here_ , as in home - as in China, as in Shanghai - definitely not as in Collège Françoise Dupont, Paris. Has Marinette's French truly abandoned this badly??

Adrien's face goes pensive for a moment, as if trying to puzzle something out, then he lights up. "Oh yeah, I remember now! Master Cheng speaks Wenzhounese, right? And-" he furrows his brows, and Marinette finishes his sentence before she can stop herself,

"-and my mom and I speak Shanghai dialect."

Adrien blinks. "I thought Wenzhounese and Shanghainese were closer than other dialects?"

"No, you're thinking of the Wuzhou dialects, and even then it's a lot harder to understand them than, um, it's between Shanghai and Suzhou." Which had been why Marinette had needed help translating when her grand-uncle had come to visit them - she understands enough Mandarin not to need translations when listening, but speaking it is entirely out of the question. She'd felt a bit bad when she'd seen the way grand-uncle had looked so out of place in the bustling streets of Paris, unfamiliar with the rounded way of pronouncing everything, but Adrien had helped a lot with putting him at ease. (His pronounciation isn't exactly _the best_ , but it's understandable, which is a lot more than what Marinette - with her hastily-written Shanghainese sentences in an unanswered hope that they can understand each other in writing, if not in speech - would have accomplished.)

"Oh, that's right! I always get those two confused..." A hand reaching for Adrien's sleeve halts his sentence, and a voice whose owner is almost as high up on the list of people Marinette despises as Hawkmoth is, croons,

"But dialects are so difficult to distinguish between!" Lila says with a flirty smile, voice raised just enough so that it carries to everyone in the room. "Why, my own Milano dialect was everything I'd known until we went to Sicily and then Venice, it's like everyone's speaking a whole other language! I'm so grateful a couple of seniors took pity on me and helped me learn some while I was there!" She flutters her lashes and bashfully adds, "They wanted me to help with the revival movement of the dialects, but I couldn't just leave my family like that, and so I couldn't participate much."

"Really, Lila? But that's so cool!" Rose says enthusiastically. "Say something in one of them, I'm so curious to see how different they really are!"

"Well," Lila says with a self-satisfied smile, "Let's see, how about 'one language is never enough'? In Italian, it's 'Una sola lingua non è mai abbastanza'! In Sicilian, it's 'Na lingua sula mai abbasta', and in Venetian it's 'Na ƚengua soƚa no ƚa xé mai bastansa'." The class, most of which had been listening with enrapture to her tale, ooh appreciatively.

Marinette's only brushes with Italian that aren't courtesy of Lila are whenever her grandmother visits and slips up with an Italian curse or two, so she's not the best person to judge the legitimacy of those phrases, but that self-satisfied glint in Lila's eyes _absolutely_ means she's not telling the truth.

Adrien meets Marinette's eyes and flutters his lashes down very subtly; it's a nod. He's noticed as well. His eyes dart down and to the right once, very quickly; _I know something about this._

Then he smiles down at Marinette and says, "Hey, so how's it pronounced in Shanghainese then? Shengjian Mantou."

It takes her but a second to decide to play along. "Um, it's ssanji mhoedhou." The syllables feel clunky on her tongue after so much French, but Adrien's excited smile is worth the flash of irrational guilt that she's mispronouncing her mother's tongue.

"Ssanji m-m-" He tries, face adorably scrunching up in confusion.

"Mhoedhou. You've got to tense your throat before the 'm' sound, like that pause in 'uh-oh' in English."

Adrien furrows his brows in concentration and mutters 'uh-oh' a couple of times under his breath. "Ssanji mhoedhou. Is that right?"

Marinette purses her lips to stop herself from laughing. "You're the only person I've ever met who sounds Cantonese when he speaks Shanghainese."

For some reason, Adrien looks inordinarily pleased with himself for that.

* * *

Being Ladybug used to be a prison, felt like a cosmic joke - _protect civilians from monsters, be the hero they need_. She'd wanted to find whoever told Tikki she would be a suitable superhero and show them _exactly_ how wrong they were - she knew her statistics by heart and nothing would be able to turn them into _heroic deeds_. But two years had passed since then; two years filled with Tikki's infinite patience and wisdom, and Chat Noir's bright and refreshing presence, and though every 'You're a hero!' and 'Thank you!' still feels like a knife between the ribs, she's grown to love parts of it.

One such part, she's partaking in right now - it's a January evening in Paris, and Ladybug is _running_ in a way she can't when she's Marinette, so fast she's but a blur of red and black over the rooftops. Chat Noir is following behind her, of course, but they both know who's going to win in a game of chase - she's proved her absolute superiority in that one thing a long time ago. (In return, well, she's never going to get the hang of that helicopter-baton thing he does all the time, which she supposes is fair, no matter how much fun it seems.)

"Did My Lady remember to eat after we took care of the Akuma this noon?" Chat Noir playfully asks after Ladybug's finally exhausted herself for the night and found a suitable resting place on an unlit roof somewhere in the 10th arrondissement. He doesn't bring up the running - he never does, just like Ladybug doesn't when he's the one jumping and twisting around in the night, rattling off puns and awful commentary like he's kept track of everything he'd wanted to say during the day and been unable to.

Ladybug smiles at him, just because she can. "I did. You'd be happy to learn my lunch luckily had nothing to do with fish, either."

Her partner staggers as if hit, and dramatically flops an arm over his forehead. "Hit right in the heart, how shall I survive! Is it my pitiful fate to be pelted with such insults, for I am so unfortunate as to be the target of not one, but two sharp-tongued individuals and their aversion to fish!"

"Plagg scolded you for ruining his nose with that fish, didn't he," Ladybug says drily, and Chat Noir nods sadly before flop-falling back onto the roofttop.

"I made the mistake of saying he should be used to the smell considering what he eats every day, and had to withstand an hour and a half lecture on how I better take my words back and never insult his precious camembert ever again by comparing it to that disgrace of a fish paste." His tail lashes behind him as he adds snidely, "Pretty sure I caught that he actually once ate so much Sursströmming he got sick, in the middle of his prattling."

This would match what she knows of Plagg from the many times she's caught Tikki complain about him and his insatiable appetite under her breath, so Ladybug feels free to laugh at the kwami's antics. Chat Noir sends her a wide grin, obviously very pleased with himself.

"But anyways, I was asking that because, if My Lady is in the mood for some nice-smelling food for a chance, there's this very nice new Doner place just two streets down from here that's still open. It's our duty as protectors of the city to, ah, make sure the food is suitable for the picky palates of Parisians, what say you?"

"Oh, well, if it's our _duty_ ," Ladybug drawls mockingly and straightens up from her crouch. Chat Noir beams at her, radiant like the sun.

"My Lady, you will _not_ regret this, I assure you."

.

An outstandingly delicious XL-sized doner each later, Chat Noir is lounging on top of what Ladybug would, with considerable generousity, call an awning, swinging one leg back and forth like he's forgotten he has a tail that could do that for him.

"I eat salad." Ladybug shoots.

"Ngo5 sik6 sa1leut4!" Chat Noir immediately answers.

"Sa1leut2, leut is second tone, not fourth! With me now, sa1leut2."

"Sa1leut2," he dutifully repeats, and Ladybug allows herself a smile as she continues quizzing him on food (which sadly doesn't include the word 'doner'. She'll make sure to rectify that mistake next time, because M. Tekin's creations are simply _amazing_ ). 

She'd had an audible accent two years ago, when they'd just been starting out, but Chat Noir had been a nice kitty even then and hadn't let his curiousity get in the way of keeping their identities secret when she'd shut down his line of questioning the first time.

Instead, he'd thrown out that he could speak Mandarin, if she'd feel more comfortable using that when they talked, and she'd told him that she could understand a little bit of Mandarin, but it wasn't her first language. Nothing more had been said on the front of languages until half a year ago, when Ladybug, exhausted and distracted, had tripped on a roof tile and cursed up a storm in a language that couldn't be mistaken for French or Mandarin.

Chat Noir, who'd caught her before she could smash her nose into the roof ledge, had delightedly tried to repeat what he'd heard while wheezing with laughter. Embarrassed, Ladybug had scolded him for his awful pronounciation, and somehow she'd found herself spending some time on every patrol helping him with his Cantonese ever since. She'd been worried in the beginning - he'd admitted to her some time ago that he was very busy in his real life and barely had free time, so it felt selfish to make him study more when he should be relaxing, but he'd very firmly told her that he would be looking up stuff on his own anyways, and it would be a lot more enjoyable if she was with him. She'd reluctantly caved in, but made sure they were taking it very, very slowly.

They'd started with curse words, because of course they had, and Chat Noir had looked downright impressed at some of the things she mentioned, which Ladybug had deigned to take as a compliment. After that, it had been placating sentences, things to say to Akuma victims or civilians who got scared and couldn't speak French or Mandarin, and then it was giving directions and other such things, such as thanking people and talking about food.

The one who speaks more often to civilians is him anyways, and Marinette has been forced to watch countless compilations of 'Chat Noir speaking Chinese!!!' by Alya as she'd raved about his supposed real identity, so the uproar when someone uploaded a clip of them guiding a little Cantonese lady to the Seine river had been... well, it'd been a _thing_. A funny shitshow, even, if you will, that had become a lot less funny when they next ten Akuma attacks had been centered around the three biggest Asian communities in Paris, and had only stopped once someone caught Ladybug on camera cursing out Hawkmoth while fighting 'Tough Tofu'.

(She'd called him an utter idiotic moron if he was truly the sort of person who couldn't possibly imagine that someone might say something in Chinese because they've googled the phrases on their phone to help people in need, because that's what superheroes do, help people, unlike M. 'Hiding in a pupa all day, waiting for people to stub their little toes so I can use their emotions to get them to fight for me because I can't do anything by myself, including stealing jewellery from a buzzing bug and a mangy cat'. Marinette had refused to watch the video even once, equal parts horrified and mortified, but according to Alya, it had become A MemeTM very, very quickly.)

(There's a small but dedicated part of their fans who think Chat Noir is the Asian one out of the two of them, which Ladybug had found especially hilarious. Chat Noir's disgruntled reaction when a teenage girl he'd saved had stepped up and called him 'oppa6' to his face had been _priceless_.

"I speak Mandarin!" He'd whined to her later. "My Lady, Korean and Chinese aren't even in the same language family!"

"I shall tell the next ones that they should call you 'gege' instead, then," Ladybug had answered with a smirk, and had spent the next ten minutes laughing so hard she'd barely been able to avoid falling of the roof they'd been on, because Chat Noir's response had actually, honest to God, been to _yowl_ in offense.)

* * *

The Flash is a horrendous Akuma all around; firstly, he's absolutely one hundred percent a Marvel and/or DC hero rip-off, a very blatant one if Chat Noir's incensed mutters are anything to go by. Secondly, he's a very unpleasant guy to be fighting, because he can turn himself intangible if he runs fast enough, which means that traps have to be laid extremely carefully, because Ladybug's a lot slower than him when she's swinging around on her yo-yo.

(Thirdly, he's a very zealous bragger, zipping up and down Paris with no regard to who or what he's blowing away, all the while yelling at the top of his lungs that he's the fastest in the whole wide world. Ladybug barely restrains herself from commenting that if that's his top speed, he would have been scrapped a long, long time ago if he'd ever been in the Lab, because this is neither the place nor the time to give out private details like that.)

Chat Noir, who is not privy to things connected to The Lab outside of the fact it existed, but knows her the most when it comes to battle situations and isn't nearly as stupid as people seem to think he is, is a lot more agitated today, and his tail is lashing behind him so hard it actually deflects some debris away when Mr. Show-off blows past them yet again.

At some part during the fight, after an unsuccessful Lucky Charm and a hurried recharge, Ladybug finally admits to herself that they won't be able to win like this - not even her own faster-than-average speed, augumented by Tikki's suit, is able to stand up to the Akuma's mad dash. There is only way out of this situation, of course - of course this is why her partner had een so agitated, she just hadn't wanted to see it because she _didn't want to_. But between something she doesn't want to do and Paris' safety, there is - never will be - any contest. Ladybug grits her teeth and finally makes herself draw the obvious conclusion that Chat Noir had reached, at the very start of their fight.

"I'll catch him, and you destroy the goggles!" Because of course a speedster would have _goggles_. Chat Noir nods, an uncharacteristic frown pulling the corners of his mouth downward, and shifts his stance. They can both hear The Flash coming, tearing through Boulevard Saint-Martin and laughing wildly.

Ladybug takes a deep breath, bellying her apprehension and fear, drops into a sprint start position, and, for the first time in five years, does what she was created to do: _run._

.

It's laughably easy to catch up to The Flash: Ladybug knows her city like the back of her hand, and even a speedster has to lower their speed when running through narrow streets - The Flash's super-speed doesn't give him the computing power to _see_ where he's running, after all, and when his speed is over 200km/h, it doesn't matter how good the transformation and armour he has is - one mistake and he'll go _splat_ like a bug on a windshield. Something he evidently knows, or at least suspects, considering he tries to get out of the back alleys Ladybug is chasing him into, but Ladybug's been trained for this since she was born - he isn't going to go anywhere she doesn't want him to.

Her legs are starting to ache, a dull, throbbing pain she knows very well, but she pays it no mind; The Flash is starting to slow down in order to be able to dodge the obstacles in his path - trash cans, low-hanging balconies, back doors opening suddenly, slippery puddles of unknown liquids. She waits for the moment where his speed drops enough that he stops being intangible, then shoots forward at once and tackles him to the ground. He hasn't been trained how to avoid attacks while running, relying on his secondary power to do the work for him rather than pay attention and _dodge_ , and he is exceedingly cocky anyways - he truly wouldn't have survived more than a few hours of the Lab.

It's downright easy to revert back to Mission-Ready Mode, herding targets to the desirable location and taking them down when they least expect it; it's a lot more difficult to snap out of it, to hold her punches back, to compute what is the optimal strength to knock him out but not crack his skull open, because this is supposed to be an extraction mission and not an assassination. It's downright excruciating to reel even that in, because this is no Mission and she is Ladybug and not Qing, and the person in her arms is an innocent victim and she is a superhero who _helps_ people.

Ladybug holds the snarling Akuma down with ease she despises and hopes nobody had the suitable technology to actually film this battle, because she can admit to herself that this has rattled her enough to relapse to previous behaviours, but she has no idea whatsoever how to explain that to overzealous reporters who'd undoubtedly smell a story on her without exploding. (And Alya in particular - Ladybug knows it's a slim chance, but she hopes against hope that she's missed that last part of the confrontation. She hates to lie as Ladybug, and hates to lie to friends even more, and today she'll have to do _both_.)

Chat Noir jumps down into the alley from where he'd been perched on a third-story window - seeing him on rooftops running in this direction would be a dead give-away to their location, but even when Parisians have become used to looking up, they haven't yet caught on that Ladybug and Chat Noir only use rooftops when they want to be _seen_.

"You like what I did with the place, My Lady?" he purrs out with a satisfied smirk, but his eyes are serious and trained exclusively on the Akuma Ladybug's pressing into the ground. Ladybug is a little impressed, actually - some of the obstacles were so cleverly placed she almost tripped over them herself. Chat Noir really does have a head for strategy when he cares to show it.

"You did perfectly, minou." She tries to smile at him, but the taught flatness of her expression sticks to her face even after she wants it gone. Chat Noir sends her a charming grin, crouching next to The Flash's head, slipping the goggles off the Akuma's face and desintegrating them. Ladybug shakes the last of the unpleasant thoughts off, purifies the little butterfly as always, and then puts everything back in its place. (Chat Noir's extensive obstacle course also disappears, but that's fine - one of these days, she's going to ask him to build her another one.)

It's a bit more difficult to stand up than Ladybug wants to admit - the pain in her legs, though still dull, has increased exponentially, which doesn't bode well for suitless-Marinette tomorrow. She still does it without flinching, because this is a weaness she cannot afford anyone to know about.

"Bien jué!" They fistbump like always, and then Chat Noir hesitates with taking his hand away.

"Are you-" _going to be okay,_ is what he no doubt wants to ask, because she might have not told him a lot, but he's not blind, or unobservant. Ladybug smiles, because he truly is _kind_ , in a way Q5-12-35 had never thought was allowed to exist.

"I didn't use Lucky Charm this time, so I'll probably patrol for a little while. You go home and rest, hakmaau4."

Chat Noir nods, still serious, but doesn't press. "Take care, My Lady." He turns to grin at the newly-awakened boy in the alleyway: "If you ever need anything, you know where to go, right?" He waits for the boy to nod dazely, and then he vaults away and to the rooftops, surprised and excited voices following his appearance.

Reassuring the Akuma victim - an athlete who'd gotten unsatisfactory results in his last competition - is easy; Ladybug smiles and tells him he should run because he likes to do so, not because of his stats. Then she swings away just as Alya comes running, phone in hand and questions already forming on her lips.

Ladybug lands on a rooftop a few streets away from the scene of the battle and allows herself three more breaths of fresh air, enjoying the luxury of standing straight (relatively) without pain. Running so suddenly and so quickly when she hadn't even stretched beforehand, after so many hours chasing after the Akuma and twisting away from attacks, aren't going to make tomorrow pleasant at all, and especially not if the weather report for tomorrow is true. Cold hadn't been good for Marinette and her old injuries even before, but with Tikki in the mix, who brings with her lethargy and even more acute sensitivity to cold... Even if the Ladybug suit shielded her from most of the pain, it'd be a miracle if she could walk down a flight of stairs tomorrow, let alone participate in gym.

* * *

Her predictions turn out to be correct; in the morning, her legs are a combination of numb, staticky and painful to the touch, her whole body is one big sore, and Marinette barely recognises her room, cold white tile and hard, military-issue mattresses replacing warm wood and dust-pink bedding every time she blinks. Tikki, now well-versed in how things like this go, is already opening the jar of soothing balm on her nightstand.

"Mm goi, cungzai,5" Marinette rasps out tiredly, and starts slathering the cream where it's hurting the most first. Tikki says nothing, phasing through the drawer to retrieve a thick roll of bandages and a couple of heat packs, but the way she's hovering around her betrays her worry. (29 used to do that, pretend she didn't care at all when she in fact cared the most of them all.)

They bind her thighs carefully; not too tight but not too loose, with one heat pack for each leg. Then Marinette slides on the compression leggings her parents had bought for her just for days like these, adjusts the length a few times, and finally climbs up to her feet.

She falls down twice while getting dressed courtesy of a couple unexpected stabs of pain, both times luckily landing on her bed and not the floor, and then her alarm rings, and she has to get to school in the next twenty minutes or she'll be late again.

Tikki flies to her face and places one of her hands on Marinette's cheek, chittering reassuringly in her ear - not actual words, not on days like these, not French and not Cantonese and _especially_ not Mandarin - and then phases into her backpack to check if everything's as it should be. (48 had always been nervous like that before a Mission, double- and triple-checking everything as if it had any impact over the success ratio whether she'd given one or five knives.)

Marinette looks at her reflection in the mirror, a face that is now used to smiling but still defaults to 'blank' if she's not careful, and rubs her thigh absently when it twitches under another sudden bout of pain. "I'm Marinette Dupain-Cheng. I'm just a normal girl, with a normal life." She says, French accent perfect. The girl in the mirror looks like what her sisters would have looked like, if either of them were still alive.

* * *

The day is, all in all, one of Marinette's worst days. (But it's not Q5-12-35's; not even close to it.)

She has to drag herself up three flights of stairs, thighs pulsing with sharp pain with every movement, and she trips no less than six times on the way to the classroom because she loses feeling in one or both legs every five steps, and during the whole Physics period, when the sharp pain increases and Marinette had to chant to herself that _it doesn't really hurt that much, you've gotten worse so stop getting distracted_ , Lila started whining about her chronic pain in her wrists (not arthritis, this time), and can Adrien _please_ help her write this and that thing, oh and maybe help her walk to the gym, or even carry her bag-

Then in P.E., Lila bumps into Marinette as she's walking to hand in her note about skipping today's lesson, and it just so _happens_ that the edge of the desk she was walking around slams into the exact spot of her old injuries. It's not the mere echoes of the wound anymore; it becomes a sudden, brutal pain, cutting deep into her flesh and to the bone and the spreading back outward, just like getting stabbed - Marinette's vision goes black and spotty; she can _feel_ her legs giving out from under her, and if she actually falls down she's not sure she'll be able to get back up.

A warm hand grabs her arm and steadies her; she recognises Adrien's voice and that he's asking her something, but the pounding in her ears, in synch with her throbbing legs, deafens everything around her. A deeper voice comes closer, and Adrien says something before he shifts behind her and hauls her into his arms.

"We're going to the nurse now, so just rest, Marinette," she hears whispered in her ear. It reminds her of Chat Noir's sure presence, like he's got her back so she can do and be anything and everything. Tikki presses against her tummy from her pocket in her bag, conveying her agreement.

_Okay,_ she thinks against the pain, _if Tikki says it's okay then it must be safe,_ and closes her eyes.

* * *

Her mother is there when she wakes up, lips tight but hands gentle as she brushes the hair out of Marinette's face.

" _Stubborn child, why do this when you could have told us you weren't feeling well?_ " She asks, but they both know the answer; Marinette would sooner collapse than tell anybody she's in less than peak physical condition.

" _I'm sorry, Nyung._ " She says nonetheless, because she _is_ sorry.

Her mother sighs, obviously aware arguing about this is futile. " _You've been excused from school for the whole week. You can call friends to help you with homework, but no overworking yourself, okay? And no 'I didn't want to worry you' or 'It doesn't hurt that much, honest!', understood? When it hurts, you call us and we fix what we can."_

Today was an exception, really; a deviation from the norm, an Akuma she was not prepared to face and had to deal with the consequences of that by herself. But if playing nice can soothe her parents even a little... " _Okay, Nyung._ " Maybe some rest is for the best, after all. Marinette has let herself go, these past five years, and it's obvious this is for the worst; she has a lot of catching up to do this week.

* * *

Nightmares never used to be a problem; she'd never known it was possible for them to not exist, just not be there, haunting her rare resting hours, and so she'd never paid them any attention even when there hadn't been anyone but her left in the room. (Her sisters had kept her company in her nightmares instead, of course, but they'd all been quiet and still or too noisy alltogether, and she'd never been able to decide which one she hated more.)

But now the most common stars of her bad dreams are a variety of Akumas and Chat, in a myriad of scenarios that could-would-have happened, so when instead of Paris' decimated streets and her partner, prone on the ground, she sees a white-tiled room lit up by fluorescent lights that make her eyes hurt and stomach churn, she's surprised, and not prepared at all to deal with what she knows is coming.

The two bodies, tossed carelessly on the floor like dolls, have her face. One of them is lying in a pool of blood, repeating brokenly, 'it hurts, it hurts'; the other one is whole and unhurt, but for the vacant look in her eyes and her unnaturally gaping mouth, because nobody'd said exactly how she'd died.

Q5-12-35 stands frozen in the middle of the room, watching the blood fill the grout joints of the white tiles little by little as Q5-12-48's voice gradually rises and her words turn from whimpers into incoherent screaming. Q5-12-48's voice hammers into her brain like a gunshot, but she's still somehow able to hear the way Q5-12-29's neck snaps when she twists her head around sharply to face her and snarls out, "It was supposed to be _you_!"

She rockets out of her bed, bedding and all, heart pounding painfully and air in her lungs disconcertingly _not enough_ , and jumps down to the lower floor in a flash of blue like she's still back in The Lab and they'll punish her if she isn't fast enough, pain in her legs noted and dismissed in the space of one breath. Her footfalls are silent and so is the way she closes the bathroom door behind her, movements ingrained from years of _do your job properly or you'll be decommissioned_.

The lighting is a warm yellow rather than the harsh blue-white of the Room, and the tiles are a flowing abstract mishmash of green and gold without a speck of red on them, and the air smells not like burning antiseptic but lavender and sandalwood, and Q5-12-35 slides out of Marinette's skin like a ghost and tucks herself back where everything from _Before_ is stored.

Marinette leans her weight on the bathroom sink, hands gripping the edge so hard her knuckles turn white, so hard she might as well pretend her hands are shaking because of the effort rather than fear, and looks at her reflection in the mirror, eyes red and puffy. "I'm Marinette Dupain-Cheng. I'm just a normal girl, with a normal life." She says, French accent perfect.

The girl in the mirror looks like what Q5-12-35 felt like on the inside, when Q5-12-48 and Q5-12-29 died.

* * *

It's late in the evening, and Tikki is throwing her disapproving looks every five minutes, but Marinette really has to finish this sketch because she can _feel_ the idea slipping away. She's been so bored these last few days, even with Alya, Nino and Adrien visiting every day, and with Chat Noir expressly forbidding her to go out until she felt better, with the wholehearted agreement of Tikki. She doesn't know what to do other than do her stretches, sketch and desperately not think of the past.

There's a shuffle of footsteps above her head, and Marinette cocks her head; Chat Noir hasn't swung by in a while, but he usually gives more of a warning and rarely comes so late.

He's usually too shy to let himself in, because he has to 'step on a lady's bed to get in, and he'd never dare do that without explicit permission', no matter how many times Marinette just tells him to come and go as he pleases, so she adds the final details of her Mo Dao Zu Shi costume redesign and climbs up to her bed to let the silly stray in.

The hatch is already open, and the street lights outside are bright enough for Marinette to distinguish blond hair belonging to the silhouette of who most definitely _isn't_ Chat Noir. The figure swings down with an ease of someone who's been doing this since they were born, and when their face is finally illuminated, Marinette inhales sharply.

"A-Huang!"

A-Huang, with wind-swept two-block hair three shades darker than Chat Noir's and piercing yellow eyes, smirks.

" _Bonjour,_ A-Qing. I saw your last run on the news and just couldn't _not_ come visit."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   1. _Papa, mom, good morning, goodbye!_ In Shanghainese. [ ▲ ]
>   2. In Mandarin Chinese, 'mantou' is a bun without filling and 'baozi' had any kind of filling. In Shanghainese, however, as well as other Wu Dialects, 'mantou' is the word used for both. [ ▲ ]
>   3. cung4zai2, written like this: 蟲子 means bug! Written like this, 蟲仔, it means little bug! Marinette calls every kwami using -仔 at the end of their names, which is how nicknames are built in Cantonese. [ ▲ ]
>   4. hak1maau1, meaning 'black cat' in Cantonese [ ▲ ]
>   5. mm4goi1, cung4zai2 - thank you, little bug [ ▲ ]
>   6. 'oppa' is the Korean word for 'big brother' (if the speaker is a girl). 'Gege' is the Chinese word for 'big brother'. Both of them are used for 1) real siblings, 2) close male friends, and 3) boyfriends. Both of them have a certain flirty connotation when used by a girl for someone she's not related to. [ ▲ ]
> 



End file.
